Nikki Haley Cannot Save Us
She can only consolidate the not-Trump vote, which doesn’t amount to much more than 30 percent of the Republican electorate
This will be my last post until after the long weekend. When I return, I hope to write something about how this past Sunday’s election in Argentina, which elevated a self-described anarchocapitalist to the presidency, should be understood as continuous with the global right-populist surge. (But wait, don’t populists and nationalists oppose libertarianism? As I’ll explain, it’s not so simple. Stay tuned for that.) In the meantime, I wish all my subscribers a very Happy Thanksgiving. I am deeply thankful for each and every one of you.
Today’s post aims to pour cold water on some unrigorous thinking that’s been gaining traction in recent days among those who devote a significant portion of their waking hours to thinking about politics.
That thinking runs like this: The presidential campaign of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the normie Bush-era Reaganite, is surging—in national polls and in some of the first states to vote in the winter. Moreover, various head-to-head polls show her beating incumbent President Biden in the general election more decisively than former president Donald Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Put it all together and we’re left with a vision of the Republican future very different than the one most pundits have been predicting for the past year. Instead of Trump winning the GOP nomination decisively, or DeSantis taking him down by uniting Trumpian populism with ideological ferocity and competence in governing, maybe Haley could beat back the populists in favor of a return to the Reaganite era of the Republican Party, thereby giving the GOP an added edge against Biden while also purging the tactical extremism of the Trump era.
I will say two positive things about these hopes: For one thing, I broke from the right in 2004, in reaction to the Bush presidency, so I wouldn’t vote for Haley next November if she won the nomination. But I would be much less worried about the future trajectory of the country if she (as opposed to Trump) prevailed against Biden next November. So in that respect, I would be thrilled for this story of Haley’s triumph in the primaries to be believable.
Second, I think it’s quite plausible that Haley would do better in the general election against Biden than Trump or any other right-populist. Lots of right-leaning analysts doubt this because they’ve fully bought into the story of Trump’s great breakthrough in 2016 with white working-class voters (actually, it’s more accurate to call them mostly white voters who haven’t graduated from college). That breakthrough was real, making the GOP competitive in the decisive Midwestern swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But note that Trump lost those states in 2020. That’s because Trump also repulsed a lot of other voters (suburban professionals who have graduated from college) who used to lean Republican and now incline toward the Democrats. Could a less polarizing and dangerous Republican nominee, like Haley, win back a significant number of those voters in a general-election contest against an unpopular incumbent Democrat? I don’t see why not.
So Haley definitely has some things going for her. The trouble is that they only come into play if she wins her party’s nomination, and that’s where the case for Haley optimism breaks down, despite all the good press she’s enjoying at the moment.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Notes from the Middleground to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.